


Delicate

by spaceysev



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, First Date, First Kiss, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Mentions of Blood, POV Spencer Reid, SO MUCH FLUFF, Spencer Reid - Freeform, criminal minds - Freeform, spencer is absolutely and completely over the moon in love with you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:15:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26754157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spaceysev/pseuds/spaceysev
Summary: Spencer's never been the best with words. The irony of this doesn't escape him, but as he thinks back on those four specific moments that pushed you closer and closer toward him, he comes to realize that you never really needed him to be.Or: Four times you tell Reid you love him, and the one time he tells you.
Relationships: Spencer Reid/Reader, Spencer Reid/You
Comments: 12
Kudos: 168





	1. You'll Always Have Me

**Author's Note:**

> Happy birthday to Audrey! I love you dearly, and I hope this makes you smile!

Spencer doesn’t like the way lies taste in his mouth.

He knows there’s no logical reason for it. Lies are only constructs of the human understanding of deception, after all. They aren’t tangible, they aren’t edible, and they certainly aren’t accompanied by the acidic tang characteristic of citrus, yet even still he’s never been able to tell one without the bitter taste of lemon blooming across the tip of his tongue.

So he tries not to tell them very often. Not to unsubs, though it had been unavoidable during this last case and the mental gymnastics he’d had to perform to keep the guy from unloading a gun full of bullets into a slew of innocent bystanders — including one of his fellow agents. Not to Hotch, or Morgan, or any of the rest of the team, not since he’d gotten clean and _stayed_ that way. And not to you, despite the fact that he’d wanted to tell you he wasn’t even a little bit tired when you’d sat next to him on the jet and encouraged him to try and get some sleep.

He’s still getting used to having you around — or, more accurately, _you’re_ still acclimating to being around _him._ You haven’t rolled your eyes in irritation at his rambling yet, or poked fun at his habit of volunteering fun facts that may or may not be only somewhat related to the original topic of conversation. It’s hard to wrap his mind around, especially when you respond to his tangents with wide, curious eyes and genuine smiles, or even the occasional enthusiastic chime of your voice when you have something to add yourself. You haven’t yet fixed him with a pointed look implying that you wished he would learn to take a hint and stop talking.

Most notable, Spencer thinks, is that you haven’t made him feel _other._ He’s been waiting for it to happen. It always does with new agents, like Prentiss, before they’d gotten to know each other very well, and then Seaver, who he never quite figured out how to talk to. But things are different with you. Easier. Which is why falling asleep sitting next to you on the jet came natural as breathing, even though he knew he’d catch flack from Morgan about it once you weren’t around to hear the teasing.

It’s your voice that brings him to, your soft, honeyed tones a gentle encouragement toward consciousness. You’re humming some achingly sweet melody beneath your breath, and the way the notes carry through the silence of the cabin, underscored by Morgan’s light snores nearby, tells him that everyone else is fast asleep. It nearly breaks his heart when you fall silent at his sudden stirring.

“Spence?” you murmur, prodding at his shoulder with your palm. He doesn’t remember falling asleep laying in your lap — he’s never done it before, or asked to, or been invited to — but the way your voice hits his ears and your words fan his cheek mean he must have. “Can you hear me?”

He doesn’t know what makes him stay silent. The warmth of your palm leeching through his shirt, maybe, or the way that the scent of your perfume lulls his breaths into a slow, deep rhythm to catch more and more of it. It might have something to do with the way his name floats off your tongue, making him feel those things in his stomach that are way too intense for anyone who claims to be a casual friend. Spencer can’t really say one way or the other. All he knows is that he’s... not quite ready to break the moment.

So he doesn’t.

“You look so calm when you sleep,” he hears you breathe, an odd note of fondness he’s never noticed before lining the edges of your words. He’s so distracted trying to figure out the reasoning for its sudden appearance that his body almost forgets to process the feeling of your warm fingers carding through his hair, nails scraping gently against his scalp. “What’s going on in that head of yours right now?”

Symphonies. Nonstop bursts of fireworks, so loud and jarring he can barely make out your words over the cacophony drumming through his skull. His own heartbeat magnified twenty times louder than is normal, harmonizing with the beat of yours, which he can hear from where his ear presses against the lower edge of your sternum. Maybe that’s why he can’t taste the lie of pretending to be asleep — his senses are already too overloaded to register much of anything else.

“You’re really pretty, you know,” you laugh quietly as the pads of your fingers gently skim across his forehead. He wants to open his mouth to repay the compliment — it’s only right, he thinks, especially considering you’re much prettier than he could ever be (not that you would ever let him _tell_ you that) — but doing that would mean sacrificing the feeling of your hands in his hair, and he’s not really sure when he’ll ever get the chance to feel that again. “But I’m sure all the girls tell you that.”

They don’t, actually. The only person who tells him he’s pretty on a regular basis is Morgan, and even then, Spencer’s pretty sure it’s just to get under his skin in the teasing fashion of an older brother. His mother’s called him handsome before — or, rather, she’s mentioned how handsome he _would_ be if he’d ever get a proper haircut. But no one’s ever just... meant it. Not the way it seems like you do right now, with your hands rhythmically running through his curls, nails dancing lightly at the nape of his neck. He can’t pay too much attention to the way it makes his stomach flip — he’ll shiver if he’s not careful, and then the ruse will be up — but he files it away to pore over in his privacy later on in the night, just like he files away the curiosity that comes when he thinks about why you’re whispering to him while under the impression that he isn’t awake to know the difference.

“I know you’ve been going through a tough time lately,” you tell him. It’s ridiculous that he’s entranced, captivated, hanging on your every word, but he _is_. He is. And laying here, with his head in your lap, he’s not particularly sure he minds. “But you know I’m here for you, don’t you? You’ll always have me. If you need someone to talk to, or someone to distract you, or... I don’t even know, if you just want someone to sit next to in complete silence. I’ll be that person for you.”

He can’t understand why you’re saying this to him now, while you think he’s unconscious and dreaming. He admits he’s been touchy lately. It’s getting close to the anniversary of everything that happened with Maeve, and though it’s been two years now, he still has issues coping with those events, or even talking about how they’d made him feel in the aftermath. It’s hard. He doesn’t want to forget her — even if he did, he knows he’d never be able to figure out how — but he also knows he can’t always become a haunted shell of himself for four to six weeks every year. It’s not conducive to productivity, and it’s _certainly_ not conducive to keeping his coworkers from worrying after him.

On the other hand… there’s no way that the thoughts you inspire are especially conducive to productivity, either. He’s caught himself staring across desks in the bullpen much too long for subtlety, offering little waves and funny faces every time you catch him, each one in the hopes of making you smile. His face betrays his eagerness each time Hotch pairs the two of you together on cases, which, lately, seems to be more often than not. He’s started bringing you coffee most mornings, except for those ones where you text him hours before he even wakes up — he can’t tell whether you’re an early riser or a chronic insomniac — with a _Morning, Sunshine! Sweet treats on me ;)_ and Spencer doesn’t know what it is about the winky face, but it’s stuck around in his mind for weeks now and it doesn’t appear to be in danger of going anywhere any time soon. It’s all of these things and so many more that have his mind racing, swirling with thoughts of you and whether what he ponders while he lies awake at night is in breach of the sweet little slow dance the two of you have been doing since you joined the team after Emily left.

Something warm and soft presses to his forehead, then. The sensation is so foreign that it actually takes a full five seconds before he realizes that the only possible explanation is that you’ve just kissed him.

“I love you, Spencer,” you whisper gently against his skin. “I just… I hope you know I love you.”

You go back to carding your fingers through his hair, then, without so much as another word. Resisting the urge to protest is difficult — your voice has fast become Spencer’s favorite sound and you’ve spoiled him to the point of entitlement in the last five minutes. He wants to hear you say his name again, if only to play it on a loop in his mind until the next occurrence. He isn’t above making the request, either, but that requires revealing that he’s been listening to your heartfelt prattling and he doesn’t want you to think he’s the type to eavesdrop, despite the fact you’d been speaking to him in the first place. But then you start humming again, some cordial tune he can’t put his finger on, and Spencer is mercifully spared from having to decide whether or not he should betray himself.

And as he lets himself drift back into sleep, the feel of your hands in his hair and the warm, quiet tones of your voice lulling him peacefully along… Spencer realizes.


	2. I Don't Think We Do

It isn’t often that Spencer is left feeling powerless.

It happens on occasion. As unfortunate as it is, it’s a hazard of the job and comes with the territory, and, more out of necessity than anything else, Spencer has gotten very good at recognizing that there will always be those certain situations that he can’t control. His genetic predisposition to schizophrenia, always dancing at the back of his mind, the possibility of what awaits him in the future a constant taunt he’s never quite been able to ease. That nasty drug habit he’d picked up all those years ago, one he hasn’t acted on since finally getting clean and _staying_ that way, but that his nerves always ache to feed when he gets just a little too stressed to cope. Those particularly difficult cases where the unsub turns out to be little more than a kid and he can’t seem to find the right words to get everyone out of a hostile situation safely, the results of which usually manifest in someone who the world didn’t try hard enough for dying right in front of his eyes.

But just because it doesn’t happen _often_ doesn’t mean it _never_ happens, and as Spencer wraps his scarf around his throat before exiting Quantico into the abnormally wintry air, his eyes fall upon your form standing in the distance, and — not for the first time where you’re concerned, though recalling how _many_ times it’s actually happened is just a little too embarrassing to stomach for the night — he stops dead in his tracks in awe.

Red is Spencer’s favorite color on you. It’s taken some time for him to figure that out. Flashy as it is, you never have the chance to wear much of it in the field, which is a loss he takes the time to mourn whenever he recalls the team’s last Christmas party at Rossi’s, when you’d been clad in a dress of silk and crimson and insisted he sway along to Billie Holiday with you in the living room despite his meek protests. Something about that dress brought out the rose blush in your cheeks, set your eyes off with mischief and delight, made the fringe of your lashes appear that much darker. It also made his mind wander with thoughts he’s still not entirely sure he’s allowed to have, so he’d gazed at you as respectfully as he could and tried not to focus too much on the feel of your breath against his neck. It’s a wondrous color, red. An enchanting color.

And you’re wearing it now as you stand with your arms crossed over your chest to serve as protection from the cold, though he’s not really sure how much that’ll help with the expanse of your legs, moonlit and glittering, bared to the wind. You’re also bawling your eyes out, and it’s noticing this that finally stops Spencer standing there like an idiot with his mouth hanging open and starts his feet carrying him toward you at a pace that would make Morgan proud.

“Are you okay?” Spencer asks, and he immediately has to squash the urge to kick himself. You’re standing here, alone in the cold, dressed like _that_ and openly sobbing. It doesn’t take a profiler to see that _nothing_ is okay for you right now.

Your eyes widen at the sound of his voice, and he might take the time to marvel at how cute you look when startled if he wasn’t otherwise preoccupied with concern for your well-being. “Oh,” you breathe, hands instantly reaching up to swat at the tears trailing messily down your face. It won’t do you any good, not with the black streaks of mascara staining your skin, but Spencer knows enough not to point that out. “H-Hey, Spence. I thought you’d have gone home by now.”

“Yeah, I was supposed to,” he responds, trying for a kind, reassuring smile and remaining unsure of whether it actually appears. Try as he might, he can’t bring himself to care. He doesn’t want to pretend not to notice your pain, even though he knows you probably rather he do. What he _does_ want is... something he doesn’t think he can have. “I got a little caught up going over my closing report. What about you? You left a couple hours ago, didn’t you?”

“I did,” you sniff, and Spencer is suddenly overwhelmed with the urge to reach up and wipe the rest of the tears from your face himself. “Um... I had a date, actually.”

“Oh,” he says, making a concentrated effort to keep his voice light. “And you... came back to the office?”

A bitter laugh escapes your lips, though it comes out more as a garbled choke. “Yeah, I guess it didn’t go so well. I was going to go home, but at some point I turned around and kind of just... ended up here.” You shrug, your eyes falling to the ground, and Spencer follows your gaze down to your red toenails, gleaming in the lamp light and contrasting starkly against the black of your strappy heels. “I just didn’t think I could handle being alone right now. So.”

It’s difficult not to make assumptions in that moment, and though he tries, he feels his chest swell with an inappropriate surge of protectiveness. Again, it doesn’t take a profiler to read the implications of this situation, or to know that something has to have gone terribly wrong in the three hours since he’s last seen you. He can’t do much about the crying — he’s _never_ been good with tears, no matter who they’re coming from — but his mind tumbles violently with the possibilities of what all could have gone wrong on your date, and his limbs itch to track down whoever’s responsible for getting you to this point of emotional distress and... and... telling them off with some strong vocabulary at the very _least._

But there’s no use in that. He can’t change what’s already happened, and he doubts you’d let him go and yell at whoever’s done this to you. Anyway, you’re standing here in front of him, wide eyed and shivering. He might not be able to do much about the crying — he might not even be able to do anything about the _reason_ for your crying. But... maybe there’s a chance he can soothe the pain, at least a little.

“What about you?”

Your voice startles him out of his reverie, bringing him back to full consciousness of the situation at hand, and he’s embarrassed that he’s gotten so caught up in thoughts of defending you that he actually has no idea what you’re asking him. “Me?”

You nod, a wobbly smile edging at the corners of your ruby red lips. _So much red._ It really does suit you wonderfully. “Yeah, you. You don’t have any plans tonight?” He furrows his brow, searching your face for any hint of your meaning. Three seconds later, and his obvious cluelessness manages to pull a more substantial laugh out of you. “It’s Valentine’s Day, Spencer. Don’t tell me you forgot.”

“I didn’t,” he defends, and it isn’t untrue. Morgan spent the whole day detailing his extravagant plans for the night, Will had sent in _quite_ the rose bouquet for JJ, and even Hotch had been quite a bit more preoccupied with his phone than was typical. Valentine’s Day. Reid knows it’s a special day to the calendar, but it doesn’t hold any significance for him. “But, no, no plans. I was actually just on my way home to skim over Dante’s Inferno.”

You scrunch your eyebrows in a sarcastic manner, and Spencer’s just relieved that he’s managed to cheer you up enough that you let your eyes wander back to his face. “What is that, like, the sixth time this week?”

He shrugs a shoulder, unsure as to the reason for the flush of embarrassment creeping up his neck. “Classics never get old.” And then, because he’s an _idiot_ with an ironically one track mind where you’re involved, he adds, “I... like your dress. You look really beautiful tonight.”

“You’re sweet,” you murmur, unsuccessfully attempting to conceal another sniffle. Not at all, actually. ‘Sweet’ implies deception. ‘Sweet’ makes it sound like he’s just trying to soothe your ego with flattery, which couldn’t be further from the truth. He’s not saying it because he thinks you want to hear it, he’s saying it because it’s the truth and he knows it like he knows the sky is blue and the earth is green. He wishes he could convince you to see it that way. “Shame it’s going to have to go to waste, huh? Guess there’s always next year.

“Well it... doesn’t have to,” he stammers. “Go to waste, I mean.” He’s not sure where the bravery for his outburst comes, and he doesn’t particularly care to pursue figuring it out. His senses are screaming at him, going into shock with the sudden uptake in adrenaline pumping through his body, but he only swallows and forces himself to finish. “Not if you don’t want it to.” You only blink at him in silent confusion, trying to puzzle together his meaning. His heart hammers against his chest so hard it’s a wonder you can’t seem to hear it. “There’s a planetarium in town that’s staying open late for the night. When you lay back in the seats under the projector and look up at the stars you lose your central sense of gravity and trick your body into experiencing a floating sensation. It can be kind of off putting at first, but it helps to hold onto something. Which—“ _He should_ really _quit while he’s ahead_ —“you could hold my hand. If you wanted to. And we could, we could go to the planetarium. Together.”

He watches as you blink, once, then twice, then three times, and all the while his heart’s pace never deadens for even a moment. When your eyes finally focus back on him, eons have passed and stars have expanded into supernovas, all within a few short moments. “You’re… Spencer, are you offering to take me on a date?”

Yes.

No.

... _Yes_.

The wind picks up suddenly, ruffling your skirt in the breeze, caressing the loose tendrils of your hair. The scent is so intoxicating that it nearly stops Spencer from noticing you shivering once again, and before he even knows what he’s doing, he’s unwinding his scarf from around his neck and taking a confident step toward you.

“Well, it’s like you said,” Spencer responds, wrapping the scarf over your bare shoulders. It’s grey wool and it doesn’t match your dress in the slightest, but he likes seeing you in something of his, and he _especially_ like the way you instantly curl into the garment, inhaling his scent as deeply as he’d been inhaling yours off the breeze. “I don’t have any other plans, and it would be a shame for that dress to go to waste.” He offers his arm for you to accept, unable to pinpoint where this sudden burst of confidence is stemming from. He almost wishes Morgan were here to see it. “Would it make a difference if I promised to have you home by midnight?”

Again, you’re silent, save for another bout of sniffles. Spencer is horrified to see fresh tears brimming in your eyes, coupled with a wobbly frown, and is met with the sudden fear that he’s managed to screw this up — because he _always_ screws things up for himself, even when he’s not trying and even when he’s actually just trying to find more reasons to smile. He’s made you cry now, too, which makes him no better than whichever monster ruined your night in the first place. Any second now you’ll recoil from his offer and tell him to get lost, at which point he will only be able to clutch his wounded pride, and—

You nudge his arm aside and barrel forward to wrap your arms around his middle instead, clutching him close and tight and squeezing just enough to make him feel like an offered lifeline. Well. If you hadn’t been able to hear his heartbeat before, there isn’t any way you don’t hear it now.

“I love you, Spence,” you murmur into his shoulder, and he’s so mesmerized by the perfect fit of your cheek against the base of his throat that he almost doesn’t totally register what it is you’ve just said. “I don’t tell you that near as much as I should.”

Butterflies. You’re prompting _butterflies_ to flutter through his stomach. Like he’s nothing more than a twelve year old schoolboy with a crush on the sweetest girl in class.

“Let’s get going,” he chuckles, smiling down upon you with fondness as he steps back and winds his arm around yours. Huh. Maybe Valentine’s Day shouldn’t be so easily written off after all. “We don’t want to keep the stars waiting, do we?”

“No,” you laugh — _actually laugh! —_ as you rest your head against his shoulder. “I don’t think we do.”

And as the two of you walk down the street, arm in arm, excitement and giddiness charging each and every one of your steps, Spencer can’t help but ponder the fact that he’d left work expecting one sort of inferno for the night and stepped out only to find himself engulfed in a different one entirely.

It’s almost kind of poetic.


	3. Butterflies

“You keep looking up.”

It isn’t that he minds— he doesn’t. He likes the way your lashes flutter against the night’s chilly breeze, the way your petal shaped lips drop open into an awestruck ‘o’. He likes the way the moon falls on your features, the dusky twilight casting shadows beneath your jutted chin. What he especially likes is the warmth of your fingers curled around his bicep, present even through the jacket and sweater he’s wearing, and the trust it symbolizes. You wouldn’t let just _anyone_ lead you blindly down the street, after all. It’s a misguided emotional response, but he feels special.

“I’m always looking up,” you tease, sliding that piercing gaze of yours over to him. He wonders how you do that — make him feel so completely seen without even trying. As far as he can recall, no one else’s gaze has ever managed to leave him quite so exposed. “You do know how tall you are, don’t you?”

“Implying that you’re always looking at _me_ ,” he teases, leading you carefully around a puddle of rainwater. He has to stifle a chuckle, lest you think he’s laughing at you. He’s not — it’s just funny. All those movies where men rush to throw their jackets on the ground for the apple of their eye to walk over, and he finally understands what could possibly motivate a man to ruin a perfectly good coat in the name of dry shoes.

You stop the two of you walking, tugging at his arm to simultaneously pull him to you and get his attention, and once he’s come back around you stand up on your tiptoes to wrap your arms around his neck, in response to which he settles his hands down at your hips to keep you steady. “I _am_ always looking at you, Spence,” you tell him, toying with the curls just above the nape of his neck. Something twinges in his stomach — something strong and unrelenting, something he’s unfamiliar with but that he wouldn’t necessarily mind feeling again provided it were in direct relation to you. “Every minute, every hour, every day, I’m looking. The funny part about it is that you don’t even realize how _distracting_ you are.” Your mouth comes exceedingly close to his, and he’s not sure whether that’s by happenstance or if it’s intentional, but either way, he doesn’t particularly care. He’s more preoccupied with trying to work out how to get your mouth closer to his.

“ _I’m_ distracting?” he murmurs, thumbs pressing slightly into the prominent ridges of your hipbones. Some quiet part of his mind is grateful that there aren’t many other people out tonight, due to combination of the late hour and the icy weather, but even if there were a scattered audience milling about the sidewalk, he wouldn’t care enough to stop playing at this careful, flirtatious game the two of you have had going on for weeks now. “You sit there and make eyes at me across the jet, you say the most obscene things in front of the others because you know I can’t react without tipping them off, you brush my skin every time you pass me in the field.” He can feel the heat of your breath on his throat, now, and it’s taking everything in him not to lose the very precarious grasp he’s managed to maintain on his composure. “Sweet thing, I can hardly ever think straight when we’re in the same room together. _I’m_ not the distracting one here.”

It isn’t until he notices your face beaming with sudden delight that Spencer realizes the admission he’s just mistakenly made.

“You can’t think straight when I’m near you?” you breathe, a sly grin working your mouth as you press closer and closer to him. You peak up at him through the black fringe of your fluttering lashes, a flirtatiously coy grin lifting the corners of your lip, and Spencer is halfway caught between stepping away to collect his thoughts and winding his arms around your waist to pull you flush against his body. It would be so... easy. Too easy to offer his composure any sort of reinforcement. “Spencer Reid, do I give you butterflies?”

Well that’s certainly _one word_ for the foreign sensation constantly rippling through his abdomen, spurred into strength each and every time you draw close enough for him to touch. He wants to admit it — he wants to ensure you know exactly what you do to him, how you make him feel, how you disrupt the neat and tidy processes of his mind with thoughts of your touch, your scent, you, but he can’t find the words. So he decides to bend his neck and capture your mouth with his in effort to show you exactly what you do to him.

He’s kissed you before, of course. It’s one of his favorite things to do, just up there with playing chess and reminding you of your earth shattering beauty, but it’s different this time. Something about this embrace cuts deep into his soul, makes him realize that kissing you is all he wants to do, and it just might be what he’s best at in this life. It’s something to do with the way you gasp into his mouth, he thinks, the way you curl into him like a puzzle piece molded perfectly to match his shape. More than that, it’s the way he can’t hardly breathe while he’s got you in his arms, so close and intimate, and the way he doesn’t _want_ to breathe if it means pulling you closer and feeling you there with him.

“Okay,” he rasps, shaking his head and grinning admittedly like an idiot. It takes nearly all his strength to untangle himself from your embrace, but he manages, and he’s sure to keep a hand circled around your wrist before tugging you down the street with a renewed sense of urgency. “Okay, that’s it. Change of plans.”

“Spencer?” you laugh, giggling brightly as he pulls you up the street in the opposite direction of the one you’d been initially traveling in. You’re breathless, your lips are swollen, and he’s positive you’ve never looked so alluring. “Hey, what are you doing? Where are we going?”

“Home,” he tells you, and your laughter dances higher and louder through the air, setting his ears ablaze with red. “We’re going home, and we’re gonna talk about just how strong those butterflies you give me are.”

You only chuckle in response, shaking your head. “God, I love you,” you laugh, following eagerly in his footsteps.

And that’s not the first time he’s heard you say that, either, but it is the first time it kicks up a violent round of fluttering in his chest.

Butterflies. How absolutely… delightful.


	4. The World Can't Lose That

“Spencer—“

“Don’t talk,” Spencer insists with a resolute shake of his head. He’s not sure how he’s still going, not when he’d been met with the sight of his biggest fear no less than thirty seconds ago, but somehow he manages. He’s always been good at pushing emotions down, smothering them until they ran away to be dealt with another time. It’s not healthy — he knows that. Unfortunately, given the circumstances, he doesn’t have a lot of time for self improvement. “You’re losing too much blood, we need to get your heart rate down.”

A chuckle tumbles out of your mouth, stilted and shuddering, along with a smattering of blood, and Spencer’s mind shifts into overdrive trying to deduce what at all could possibly be _funny_ about this situation. “‘S only beating so fast ‘cause you’re getting handsy.”

“Don’t— don’t _do_ that right now,” Spencer snaps, pressing his hands more firmly to the wound in your chest. His hands are so slick with blood that he doesn’t even notice when his own teardrops land on them. “You can— you can be flirtatious and aloof and obnoxiously clueless when you’re not bleeding out on a dirty floor, but until we get you to a hospital where there are— surgeons, and, and anesthesia, and people who can make sure you don’t fucking die, just _please_ concentrate on your breathing.”

Spencer’s mind races a mile a minute, rapidly cycling through the pieces of knowledge he possesses that apply to this situation. He knows that the average adult has ten units of blood in their body, but that won’t help him keep it from slowly leaking out of you. He knows the team can’t be more than five minutes away, but with a gunshot wound to the chest the probability of you surviving until then looks grim. He knows each breath you take becomes more ragged than the last, which makes him wonder if your lung’s been punctured, but he doesn’t want to give that possibility any significant thought. He knows you need a doctor, one with a more practical skillset than his own, and he’s left to come to terms with his own chronic uselessness as he continues applying pressure to your wound. He knows that if he has to listen to you try to make him feel better for what could be your last precious few moments together, he’ll never be able to forgive himself. He knows he won’t survive you dying, here, now, with so much — _too fucking much_ — left unspoken. He knows he’ll never like the color red again.

Spencer knows lots of things. Unfortunately, none of those things are particularly useful in digging the bullet out of your clavicle.

“It’s so cold,” you breathe, head lolling to the side. Your lashes are fluttering at a rapid pace and your breaths are shallow now, more raspy. You’re in much too great a danger of losing consciousness. “It’s… will you hold me?”

He shakes his head, vision blurring as his tears sway along with it. “I’m sorry, I can’t, we _have_ to keep pressure on your wound.”

“Please?”

“ _No_.” He says it so sharply that he almost tricks himself into thinking he’s shouting, but then, anything louder than a whisper would sound like an atomic bomb to him right now. “Just hang on, please. Just a little longer. The rest of the team will be here soon, and then the medics, and—“

“Spencer,” you whisper, voice strained. His name on your tongue splits his heart clean in two. It’s the kind of thing where he can feel every individual rip of the two halves separating right down the middle, and he knows that, whether or not he loses you tonight, that sensation will always be awaiting him in his most dreadful nightmares. “I… If I’m going to die, I want to feel your arms around me one last time before I do. I want to take it with me.”

He shouldn’t. He knows your odds are slim, and he knows they become even slimmer if he takes his hands off your wound — and that’s _without_ mentioning how they’re effected if he moves you even the slightest bit. But you’re scared, and you’re crying, and _he’s_ crying, and he’s always had a particular hatred of denying you what you ask for. And if he’s going to lose you — he hates to give that thought any relevance, but it’s been too long and he’s so good at imagining the worst case — shouldn’t he grant your last wish? Shouldn’t he bend over backwards to soothe your soul as you part?

Shouldn’t he tell you…?

Slowly, carefully, Spencer withdraws his hands from your chest and gingerly scoops you into his arms, keeping you as still as possible as he repositions you so that your head rests against his shoulder, your back against his chest, and does his best to ignore that your skin is much too icy. He listens closely for any gasps or hisses of pain, apologizing softly each and every time your body betrays your discomfort, and he tries to put any and all calculations of how quickly you’ll bleed out now that he’s relieved the pressure on your wound out of his mind. It’s too late to wonder now whether he’s made a mistake in giving in to you, and, anyway… if it’s in pursuit of your happiness, can it really be a mistake?

“There we go,” he whispers, kissing the crown of your head before tucking it beneath his chin. “It’s alright, I’ve got you, you’re gonna be okay. Just hold on a little longer, alright? Just keep holding on.”

“Do you think we would’ve been happy together?” The question is soft off your lips, brittle as sun damaged crystal, and it catches Spencer so suddenly off guard that, for a few short seconds that don’t feel short in the slightest, his mind forgets how to comprehend language. “You and me? Would we have been alright?”

“You’re not happy now?” he questions, threading his fingers through your blood stained hair. The words don’t tumble out in a defensive tone, and for that Spencer is glad. Whatever he feels about this situation, about what you’re saying, about experiencing you drain away, right out of his arms, he can feel later, when he’s not gently rocking you back and forth in the hopes that the sensation will bring you even the slightest ounce of comfort. None of it matters, not right now. All he wants is to make sure you’re taken care of.

“I don’t mean now,” you wheeze, your palm coming to rest at his knee. “I’m asking, like… would we have been okay? Later? A y-year from now? Five years from now? Would you have still wanted me?”

“Stop talking like you’re already dead,” he pleads, tears dripping down his chin and into your hair. Where are the others? Where the fuck are the medics? _Why isn’t anyone coming?_ “I haven’t lost you yet, and I’m not planning to, so we don’t need to speak in hypotheticals. Just _keep_ … I am _begging_ you, just _keep holding on._ ”

“I’m tryin’, honey, but it’s… my hands are slipping, and I’m not sure how much longer I’m gonna last.” And he can hear it, too, in the way that your words are slurring and your voice thickens. You’re fading — he can tell. The smart thing now would be to come to terms with the odds and say goodbye, just in case… but, for the first time in his life, Spencer doesn’t want to be smart. Not if it means accepting that you’re leaving him. “Will you promise me something?”

He closes his eyes, bracing against the awful truth, and he can actually feel the resolve slipping out from underneath him. “Anything,” he tells you, fighting off the urge to sob. He needs to stay strong for you right now. “Anything, I swear to god, whatever you want.”

“You don’t believe in god, Spence.”

“Then I swear to you,” he tries again, and he hopes you can hear the fervor, the genuine sincerity in his voice. Because he _does_ believe in you, and he would do anything that you asked of him. “Whatever you want, I swear to you, I’ll do it. Just tell me what it is.”

“If I die—“

“You’re not going to—“

“ _Spencer_ ,” you insist, and the tone of your voice takes the fight right out of him, renders him immediately silent. You’ve never spoken to him like that before — he’s sure of it. “If I die… promise me you won’t forget to smile, okay?” Your words slur further, your speech slowing, and Spencer has to strain to properly make out what you’re saying. “You have a really nice smile. The world can’t lose that.”

No, what the world can’t lose is _you_ , but he knows trying to argue with you right now is pointless.

“I promise,” he tells you, because it’s all he can say. “I’ll think of you, and I’ll smile every day.”

“Promise me you won’t shut the others out,” you go on, blood now leaking from your mouth in a constant trickle. It’s funny, in an awful way. So many years in the BAU, confronted every day with grisly crime scenes and bloody aftermath, yet he’s never been so effected. Spencer wonders if that’s self absorbed of him. “Talk to Penelope when you need someone to cheer you up, talk to Derek when you need someone to listen, talk to JJ when you have trouble sleeping. Let them in, Spence.”

“I will,” Spencer whispers. “I promise.” His hands are shaking so bad that he can’t actually tell whether that’s his body or yours beneath his touch.

“And… p-promise me…” Your lungs shudder a gasping breath, and Spencer knows you’re only hanging on in effort to get the rest out. He knows he should tell you to rest, tell you it’s okay, let you know that if you need to let go, if you’re too tired to hold on, then he won’t hold it against you. But Spencer’s become a selfish creature in all those matters concerning you, and he’d sworn a long time ago never to lie to you, no matter the circumstances. As much as he wants to be able to be the man willing to sit there and rock you peacefully into oblivion…. he’s just not ready to let go of you. “Promise you’ll remember how much I love you.”

He’d have done that anyway, even without you asking him to. It’s already the first thing that crosses his mind when he wakes up each morning and rolls over to find you at his side, all mussed hair and light snores with the sheets balled up near your feet. He’s reminded every time you kiss him, so soft and sweet, and every time your lips press against his Spencer feels like he’s experiencing it for the very first time all over again. Of course he knows you love him. How could he not, when you find new ways to tell him so each and every day?

“Promise,” you breathe, just as your head lolls to the side and your hand goes slack against his leg. “Promise.”

“I promise,” Spencer whispers, but by the time the words leave his lips, you’re already gone.


	5. You Never Had To

He’s always hated hospitals.

When people ask, he tells them it has to do with trivial attributes. The lights are too bright, there are far too many germs milling about, the mass amount of crying people make him uncomfortable. And while those are all true, while he really doesn’t care for those aspects of hospitals at all, Spencer knows in his heart that it’s less to do with any of that and more to do with what hospitals symbolize for him.

People leave. It’s something he’s learned at much too early an age, yet is also something he’s _still_ learning to cope with. His father left when he was a boy, with little more than a scrap of paper by way of explanation. His mother had gone away to the sanitarium when he was eighteen, and though he’d been the one to send her there, he’d still felt the loss. Gideon left. JJ left. Emily faked her death.

_People leave._

It’s true. And with as many people who have left him over the years, Spencer figured he’d be _used_ to it by now. But then he’d held you in his arms, cradled you as your blood slowly crept its way out of your body and onto the floor, and he’d suddenly realized that he _wasn’t_ quite as acclimated to loss as he’d initially thought. He knows this, because when the doctor comes to alert him to the fact that you’re conscious and asking for him, it’s all he can do to keep himself from bolting upright and running straight to your room.

He _does_ walk at a quick enough pace to earn him a dirty look from a passing nurse. Any other day, he’d make the fort to slow down and apologize. But today isn’t any other day, and he doesn’t slow his steps until he’s made it to your door and sees, with his own eyes, that you’re sitting up and smiling.

“There you are,” you giggle, beaming up at him with wide, excited eyes, and the look you give him is so reminiscent of the one on your face from last Valentine’s Day that he’s left breathless. “It’s rude to keep a girl waiting you know.”

And he wants to do witty. Really, he does, because he knows it’ll leave your face with a smile larger than life, and considering he wasn’t sure he’d ever get to see that smile again up until two hours ago when the doctors notified him you’d made it through surgery, it’s all he wants. But there’s too much going on in his head, too many dark almosts and what-ifs to be properly ignored for the sake of rejoicing. This is a happy moment — and, really, he’s _bursting with joy_ at the sight of your open eyes — but it’s not something he can display outwardly just yet. He’s too... there are too many things that need to be said before any of that takes place.

His silence confuses you, made evident by the confused glint in your eye that’s just beginning to overshadow your wide grin. “Spence?” you prompt, tilting your head to the side. The machine you’re hooked up to beeps with the spike in your heart rate, and he has to go out of his way _not_ to tease you for it. “Did you hear me?”

Your tone shifts, and he hears the worry in your voice just as he takes note of how it begins to curl your mouth into a frown. “Spencer,” you try again, quietly pleading. He hates himself for what he’s doing, but he can’t seem to stop himself from allowing the events he’s set in motion to play out. “Spencer, what’s wrong?”

He has to say it. Before anything else, he has to say it.

Spencer swallows hard against the lump in his throat. Liquid hellfire burns his eyes in the form of unshed tears. “Do you know,” he chokes out, “how incredibly _unlucky_ a person has to be to get hit with a shot like that? _Actually_ shot? You were wearing a vest. The bullet hit you a _centimeter_ too high. One centimeter lower and we would’ve walked out of there in the next thirty seconds. Two centimeters higher and you’d have—“ He cuts himself off, the horrid taste of potentials staining his tongue uninvited. He doesn’t even want to say it, doesn’t want to give power to what could have happened to you tonight. To what _almost_ happened to you tonight.

“Spencer,” you whisper, reaching for his hand, but he snatches it out of reach before you can make contact.

“No,” he insists, wringing his hands together. He has to keep them preoccupied. His body seems steadfastly determined to betray his mind, and much as he wants to, he can’t let that happen. There are certain things he needs to get off his chest, say out loud, before he can even think about letting himself give into you. It’s the only way to make sure. It kills him, but it’s the only way. “You don’t understand, I almost… I could’ve lost you tonight. You were ten minutes and two centimeters away from _dying in my arms_.”

“But I didn’t,” you counter, and he knows. He sees the furrow of your brow, the stubborn set to your delicate jaw, and he _knows_ you’re about to throw it all right back at him. “I’m still here, Spencer, you still _have_ me.”

“Because of chance!” He doesn’t realize he’s shouting until he see you flinch, but he can’t stop, can’t back down. “You’re still alive because of dumb luck! Dumb, stupid luck, that very easily could’ve gone the other way!”

“But it didn’t,” you shoot back, and Spencer has to kill the urge to scoff. As if that’s an _excuse_.

“It _could_ have.”

“Yeah, but it didn’t!”

“It _could have!”_

“Why are you _yelling_ at me?”

“ _Because you gave up!_ ” Spencer roars, tears pricking like thorns at the corners of his eyes. “You gave up, and the worst part about it is that you expected me to just be _okay_ with it! _Don’t_ —“ He flings a hand through the air to silence you as soon as your mouth opens. He’s seething, shaking, _boiling_ with rage. He has to get it all out, and he has to do it now, or he risks poisoning any chance of your future together with unspoken resentment. “You started talking about yourself like you were already dead! Started making me promise that I wasn’t going to let losing you stop making me smile! Do you even— do you know how _ridiculous_ that is? How _unfair?_ You were bleeding out in my arms, and you were worried about my fucking _smile?_ I was two centimeters away from having to bury you six feet underground, and you were worried about my _smile?_ My smile should’ve been the last thing on your mind!”

He expects you to yell back at him. It’s only fair, after all, and he wouldn’t fault you for taking cheap shots at him the way he’s taking cheap shots at you. In some sick, twisted way, he almost _wants_ you to, if only to find some confirmation that he isn’t alone in feeling the severity of this situation so deeply. Doesn’t it effect you? Doesn’t the fact that the rest of your life was nearly stolen away right out from under you bother you? Aren’t you seething over the fact that the rest of your forever was nearly cut short?

If you are, you make no show of it. You don’t raise your voice, you don’t curse, you don’t take it out on him the way he’s taking it out on you. You only blink, analytical appraisal clear as day in your tired eyes, and not for the first time since you’d come into his life, Spencer is left to marvel over how much _better_ a person you are than he is. He could never say something like that out loud — thinking you’d ever let him get away with it is, in a word, naive — he knows the truth, even if the chances of you admitting to it are nonexistent.

You prove him right when you reach forward slowly, keeping eye contact and making sure you have permission, before resting your hand against the mangled mess of his own. “Spencer,” you murmur, searching his face. For what, he’s not entirely sure, but you must find it judging by the degree of which your eyes soften. “What is this about?”

“I told you,” he tries, knowing all too well that he doesn’t sound convincing in the slightest. You see him much too clearly — he should have known better than to think he could hide what was truly bothering him from you. “You almost died in my arms, I... it was too much to handle.”

“No, Spence,” you tell him, the embodiment of patience. “I mean what’s this about, _really?”_ You make it clear that you aren’t leaving any room for protests this time around.

So Spencer decides to tell the truth.

“You almost died,” he whispers, shaking his head. “And I realized if you had, you’d never...”He can’t bring himself to tear his eyes away from the floor, to look up at you and memorize every inch of your face a million times over like he wants to. The way he’s acting, he’s not particularly sure he deserves the luxury. “You’d have never known. I never told you.”

“Never known what?” you ask gently, blinking in pursuit of understanding. “Never told me what?”

“That I love you,” Spencer breathes, gripping your hands so tightly he can feel your pulse through your fingers. “I love you so much I can barely fucking _breathe_ sometimes. I love when you laugh about things that only you think are funny because no one else understands the joke. I love the way you can’t seem to sit still for more than fifteen seconds at a time because there’s so much on your mind and not enough time in the world to get it all out. I love the way you let me talk your ear off about things you’ve never heard of and don’t care about, even though I’m sure I must bore you out of your mind sometimes. I love— I love your smile! You always tell me I have a beautiful smile, but the truth is it doesn’t hold a candle to yours, and I— I don’t understand how you don’t see that! I love you, do you hear me? From the very bottom of my heart, I love you _so_ fucking much. I _love_ you.”

For a moment, you fall silent, and the only sound traded between the two of you is the steady beat coming from your heart monitor, incredibly consistent considering all the yelling. But then a chuckle falls from your mouth. Spencer is so shocked that at first he thinks it’s an odd sounding cough, but then it happens again, and then again, and he’s able to piece together what’s happening with the addition of the succession.

“Spencer,” you wheeze, clutching at your chest. He hopes you aren’t in pain. His ears are turning red with embarrassment and he can’t _believe_ you’re laughing at him at a time like this, but he _really_ hopes you aren’t hurting. “You don’t think I know that already?”

He blinks, mind shorting out. “Well, I— I never told you.”

“You never _had_ to,” you go on, the widest grin he’s ever seen your mouth make splitting your face from ear to ear. Spencer doesn’t think he can remember a time when you’ve ever looked so positively _delighted._ “Spencer, I wouldn’t have... we wouldn’t have gotten this far if I didn’t think you loved me. I wouldn’t have let it.”

You knew. You’d known this whole time. All this time — all those nights tangled in his bedsheets with your arm secured around his waist, all those good morning texts and flirtatious jabs at the office, wondering when everyone else was going to catch on to your little game. All those sweet kisses and affectionate embraces and evening walks beneath the starlit sky. All those different ways he’d tried to silently convey it, and you’d been picking up on his meaning the whole time.

Had he known... had he known that _you’d_ known...

“I’m sorry,” Spencer whispers. It’s all he can think to say.

“You don’t need to be,” you tell him with a resolute shake of your head. Of course; you’re the most gracious person he knows, after all. Not even getting yelled at immediately after waking up from emergency surgery could change that. “Just... I know you’ve already made me so many promises tonight. I know that. But will you promise me one more thing?”

“Anything,” he tells you, and he means it with his entire being, body and soul.

“Just... trust that I know,” you murmur, gazing at him with more sincerity than any one person has ever shown him before. “In the way that you know that I love you, trust that I know that you love me. Okay?”

“Okay,” he murmurs, nodding his head. “Okay. I promise.”

You reach for his hands, still tightly clasped in front of him, and this time when your fingers brush his knuckles, he frees one and lets you take it to hold. “I _love_ you, Spencer Reid.”

And for the first time after hearing you speak those words, Spencer isn’t given pause.

“I love you too,” he tells you adamantly.

... And he does.


End file.
